


ouroboros

by iridescentrey



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Canonical Character Death, Domestic Bliss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Mentions of Pregnancy, Redeemed Ben Solo, Resurrection, we're gonna be sad before we're happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23086126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentrey/pseuds/iridescentrey
Summary: Theouroboros(/ˌ(j)ʊərəˈbɒrəs/, also UK: /uːˈrɒbərɒs/, US: /-oʊs/) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. It is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death and rebirth.Or: Ben crosses paths with his mother after his sacrifice on Exegol. It takes dying for him to truly come alive.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 19
Kudos: 77
Collections: My favorites, TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> It took me three months to write this fic, which I was convinced would give me enough of a closure to get over TROS. Needless to say, it didn't work. I hope it can help someone else heal, at least a little bit.
> 
> TW: brief mentions of suicidal ideations. If you want to skip it, stop reading at "Who ever does?" and pick back up a paragraph later, at "The others aren't here, are they?".

**One**

He's eight years old, newly, and it's one of the last times he remembers being truly happy. Everyone's with him, everyone he could ever need. Even the voices are quieter today, more merciful; almost like they never existed.

He's old enough to know how to properly hold a fork, not old enough for his mom to let him light up eight, glossy, colorful candles on his birthday cake. 

(They do their best to keep matches away from him, at any time. It's a fool's job, considering he doesn't need them to start a fire.

A part of his bedroom wall is still scorched from one of the nights he had woken up screaming.)

He gaped when she bustled about in the kitchen the previous day, chin propped up on the counter, almost too excited to keep his hands to himself. He marveled at the decorations that unscrolled from beneath her skillful fingers, sugary flowers and golden swirls of letters, _Besh, Esk, Nern._

It's one of those moments, he thinks as his mom lights the candles up, that exist outside of time and space. Something special, sacred, mystical enough to make the skin on his arms break out in goosebumps. They're rarely together like this, easy smiles and easier companionship. 

He stands tall on a kitchen chair, and like that, he's taller than his mom and almost as tall as his dad. ("Just you wait," he says. "You'll hit a growth spurt soon, you'll be taller than uncle Chewie and you'll wish you had stayed eight forever.") 

They hold him so he doesn't fall, both steady and comforting on each side. Flames flicker, cast a fumbling dance of chiaroscuro on the walls and twinkle in Threepio's golden plates as they sing for him. He tries to think of a wish.

It's a puzzling task. At that very moment, it's difficult to ask for anything better.

His mom leans down, her hair falls in a chestnut curtain. "Make a wish, Ben," she whispers into his ear. 

He takes the deepest breath his lungs could contain and blows the candles out, wishes for this feeling to never stop. 

(He spends his next birthday at uncle Luke's academy. He struggles to remember what it was supposed to feel like.)

**Two**

He's thirty years old, he wakes up with a taste of blood in his mouth and a yawning, hungry maw where his spark should be nestled; he knows without a shadow of a doubt that he's going to die. 

**Three**

It's not a decision that he makes. 

It's barely the second time he's ever been granted a privilege to hold the half of who he is in his arms; a mockery of what he's been pleading to the force for, a "be careful what you wish for".

( _Don't you know things never go the way you dreamed them? Don't you know all you can ask for is for the nightmares to be bearable?_ )

An immovable weight of her spills between his fingers and he can't hold her to him, sharp angles and numb arms that won't scramble for purchase, won't cling to him like he hoped they would one day.

( _Haven't you learned your lesson, boy?_ )

Stock-still breast and absence-grey eyes, he wants to look at her, cast more than a fleeting glance, but he can't. She's not there, not anymore.

( _Some people aren't born for happy endings._ )

The vacuity behind his cracked ribs grows deeper, fathomless and freezing cold, sharper than any pain the fall could ever bring him. It tightens on his spine like a noose; no, it's not a choice. 

The word _choice_ implies the existence of different options. It's meant for a reality, where a scenario exists, in which Ben Solo limps away from Exegol on his own, a split-off half, jagged edges bleeding. There is no such scenario. 

He'd laugh if it weren't for the white-hot jabs of pain singeing his chest. How distorted it all had been - a crooked image in a broken mirror that he'd so religiously foraged for answers, obstinately refusing to see what was right in front of him. He thought he'd offered her all, everything he had. ( _And yet all you did was ask, ask, ask._ ) At least, everything that might be of any worth. _(You'd take it all if she didn't know better._ ) His knowledge and an offer to share it, to help her grow. His power and an offer to extend it to her, every star in the galaxy at the palm of their hands. His pain and anger, so unabashedly similar to her own. ( _How selfish, how hungry for sacrifices._ ) But none of it was what she'd wanted and his hands were left empty, hopeless, unable to make her stay when she had turned her back to him.

( _How long did it take for you to retract your hands when she refused? How long before you admitted to yourself you've never had anything she wanted?_ )

His bare palms tremble, scratched and dirty with soot; deep ache, cracked phalanx, and broken nails. They're still empty, now more so than ever. The only thing he has is himself. He rests them on her stomach and prays for the last time to be enough.

**Four**

It's not an effort he makes, it's giving in. 

It's easier than breathing to open the floodgates, to let the life force that ran the clockworkings of the broken shell of his body pour into hers, to let himself give in to the overwhelming peace of it. The warmth drizzles into her abdomen from the same hands that had only ever known how to bring ruin to what they held, to crush what they wanted to love. Hands of a killer, not of a savior. 

Time bends and blurs, seconds stretch and bleed together, and for a moment it seems like they'll remain just that, his hands; painted red and empty, eternally empty.

( _They'd lie side by side, the two of them. It wouldn't be so bad. Maybe someone would find their bodies as the time went on, maybe not. They'd stay like this until their bones turned to ashes, still entwined._ )

For a moment, it doesn't matter at all. No matter the outcome, he would've given her all, tried everything he could.

( _Maybe he'd see her again, one day, if the force willed it. Maybe she'd wouldn't abhor the idea. Maybe she'd forgive him when the time was right._ )

Then, her chest expands.

**Five**

Her soft palm comes to rest against the top of his own and his eyes snap open, lungs collapsing with a quavering sigh of relief. Something warm and wonderful floods back into his chest, the bond mends itself back together, stitch by stitch, until it feels right again. Numbness prickles at his fingertips but it doesn't matter because Rey's there, palm clasped tightly with his, her honey-brown eyes sparking to life. Confusion, awe. And a smile.

He used to imagine it a lot, her smile. A proper one, not a tight-lipped imitation that wouldn't reach her eyes, one she used to give to her friends with litanies of "I'm alright"s on her lips, one he'd glimpse right before their connection inevitably broke. He used to imagine her smiling because she wanted to, because she was happy. Because he gave her a reason to be. Crinkling eyes and dimples and a scrunched, freckle-painted nose.

The conjurings of his imagination pale in comparison to what she offers. 

His birth name rests on her lips once again and it seizes him just like it did the very first time she'd spoken it. The same and yet so different this time, it's relief, it's breathless hope. A wide, toothy grin, all his doing, bright eyes filled with wonder, flushed rosiness returning to her lips. Her fingertips graze his cheek, span the skin that used to be marred with the scar of her own making. His chin, his brow, his hair. Her gaze roams his face like they have all the time in the world. ( _They don't. It's okay._ ) For a wonderful second, it glides down to his lips, his chest burns with what he wouldn't dare to hope for. And then, she leans forward to kiss him.

Her lips are warm and dry and impossibly perfect against his; her eyes flutter closed as he presses her tighter into his chest. Encircled safely in his arms and too far away all at once, never close enough. He could stay just like that, with her, until the world collapsed around them and there was nothing left to open their eyes to. He could go, just like that. And he will, he realizes. ( _It's okay._ ) Noses pressed against one another's cheeks, clumsy, unpracticed. A ghosting of wetness against his upper lip, a trace of acrid taste in his mouth. Lungful after lungful of _her_ expands his cracked ribs, each coming slower and lazier than the last. Mouths struggling not to break into another set of smiles.

She pulls away to give him this very last moment, an afterthought to an already perfect epilogue. Flushed cheeks and kiss-stung lips barely parted, her low-hooded eyes brim with warmth, with everything they've never said to each other, with every second they'd foolishly wasted on fights, on stubbornness, and useless pride. And somehow, she cares; she cares so much. Cares enough to stay with him, until the end. At that moment, all of the past falls away. At that moment, none of it matters. Not because it's dead, the past; but because they'd grown past it. His muscles grow number, second by second; everything blurs soft around the edges, falls quieter. Heavier. He does his best to burn the look on her face into his memory. ( _She's going to be okay._ ) It's absurdly easy to break into a smile of his own. He closes his eyes for the last time to the idea of being loved. 

**Six**

It begins, as many things have in his case, with hands.

They're familiar, perfectly his own; the same shape he'd inspected thousands of times before. Unmarred, his long fingers bend and straighten with the same, effortless dexterity. They're capable, unfaltering. Clean. 

Between his fingers, there are waterfalls.

Dozens of cascades scintillate in the spectral light, froth the wild torrents of water and push them down toward the river bank at his feet, where the currents, at last, calm down; but they never stop moving completely. Reflective infinity steadily moves forward, almost indistinguishable from the swirls of azure blues, violets, and golds in the skies above. 

"Impressive, isn't it?" It's only then that he realizes he's not alone. "Makes the real thing look like a holo that's been accidentally sat on one too many times."

Wistful, blue-tinged mirth colors her voice, but she stands just as tall and proud as he remembers her. It's his mother from the times _before_ ; before the passage of time and sting of sorrow had cloaked her shoulders, until she had no choice but to bend under the weight. Before the pain and anguish weaved streaks of white between her locks, before all she's been through became traceable by deep-cut lines on her face. It's his mother from the times where he had known, sure as the sun, that she loved him.

The gusts of breeze play with her half-braided hair, make the off-violet fabric of her dress billow against her legs. Darkened with water, it clings to her sand-covered shins. She doesn't seem to mind, all focus absorbed by a commotion caused by wild pelikki, splattering around in the ford at her feet. Their long, lithe necks bend gracefully as they dive their bills into the currents in search of an easy catch. Elegant, grey-brown wings spread impossibly wide, cast torrents of droplets with every move.

"Would you like to feed them?" The normalcy of the question falls easily from her lips, like they're just a mother and a son on a usual late afternoon stroll in a world where nothing ever goes wrong. "They never seem to have enough, greedy things. Just like the real ones."

The wet sand is warm beneath his bare feet, it gives easily as he sinks in a little bit with every step. She throws another handful of treats at the flock, the commotion begins again. 

For a brief moment, it seems like his voice won't be there when he speaks. Like voices should be granted only to those, whose explanations can change what they've destroyed. He's not one of those people.

He tries either way.

"I used to be terrified of them." His voice is weak, too quiet for the bustle surrounding them; still, it's his own.

"Of course you were. They were bigger than you when we came here."

She holds one of the treats in a pinch between her pointer finger and her thumb, waits for one of the creatures to waddle its way to them on its short, befinned legs. "Yes, they might look a bit scary. And not very graceful, out of their element-" Black, beady eyes follow its prey, head cocked to the side in concentration. Three fleshy nubs spouting from its forehead quiver as it moves. It takes careful steps towards them; still, she holds her ground. "But all it takes is a little patience-" The creature reaches toward them, sharp-toothed bill closes gingerly around the chip; it promptly takes off and glides back to its flock. "-to see how gentle they really are."

It's with those words that she looks him in the eye for the first time, pools of regret brimming under tear-struck amber-brown. 

"Mom-" Something catches in his throat, unsaid litanies clench his vocal cords. No apologies could ever spin back the time. No voiced penitence would bring his family back together. Nothing could turn him back into that enraptured, bright-eyed boy making wishes as he blew the candles out, that child that did nothing to deserve the maw of darkness that loomed at the periphery of his life, patiently waiting until he walked right into it. Nothing could unmake the choices he made when he decided to trust the maw and take the first step, so utterly and tragically convinced what waited behind him would never want him back. 

A tight-lipped smile and a shaky breath, she traces his cheek with the tips of her fingers. "My, how handsome you've grown." Warmth deepens in her eyes and he trembles, perpetually too big and too much and unable to fold in on himself. It's almost comical when she pulls him into a tight embrace, arms thrown over his shoulders as if he'd never grown up, as if he'd never stopped believing that no monsters could catch up to him as long as she held him close.

He mutters breathless "I'm sorry"s into her hair, pointless utterings of a hopeless man; she shushes him as he shakes, caresses the back of his head with the same hand that used to have the power to chase away the nightmares, even if only for a short while. He'd forgotten how good it feels to be held, to stop believing every second ought to be a fight.

"I'm sorry, too," she mouths, a cold jab of pain at the tightly wound-up coil in his stomach. "I never should've sent you away." 

(He clings to his mother's skirt on that last day, before they force him to go. Before they rip him away from his home all too soon, a wound gaping open and left to fester. He knows he shouldn't cry, knows he's not a toddler anymore.

"It's just for a little while. Uncle Luke will help you." 

The shame only comes later, long after he stops pleading for them to come back. When they prod his clenched fists open, the only thing he feels is terror.)

"I shouldn't have left you alone." She pulls away to glance at him, tear tracks carving their way down her cheeks. "No matter how scared I was."

Her fingers lock tightly around his, and he almost smiles through the tears. Almost. He looks back down the long, narrow path of years, back to the young, mop-haired boy with his flower-trimmed birthday cake, on the same day he had received his first calligraphy set. No words can stop what's going to happen to that boy, no words can put the picture back together. The only thing that boy can do is be brave. Be brave and forgive those that should've held him. And then, when he grows up, he has to be brave once again, just enough to forgive himself for what he'll do. 

The boy doesn't answer; he breathes in and lets the rip he got used to begin stitching itself back together. "What is this place?" he asks instead. 

She lets go of his hands, reverie seeping through the tear-cleared eyes. "Don't you recognize?"

It's familiar in a way distant, well-loved dreams are. The breeze cards through the far-off grasslands, the blankets of golden-green sway like an ocean, ready to lull whoever walks them to sleep. "Naboo." Down in the south, illusory lights glimmer and go out every now and then, nothing more than a memory of the city that should lay beyond the plains. "Not far from Theed."

She hums a soft note of approval, like she's always done when he figured something out.

"But it's not really Naboo, isn't it?" No matter how beautiful, no matter how peaceful, it can't be the same place they'd visited back when he was five years old. "It can't be Naboo, because we're-" The words catch in his throat for a moment; he won't let them stay. He'd never been one to sugarcoat things. "Because we're dead."

She laughs then, a clear sound rings in his ears, interwoven with the splash of water and guttural cries of pelikki. His eyebrows crease in confusion. 

"Aren't we? " 

"What do I know, Ben? I'm just a politician. You're the one that always tackled the mysteries of the universe."

(He haunches over uncle Luke's books until the pale morning light, he reaches back into himself in search of something palpable, something that could be tamed.

Once you understand something, it can't hurt you anymore. Once you understand yourself-) 

"I don't understand." 

"Who ever does?" A warm smile, comfort of a palm on his arm. It's not that he hasn't imagined what it would be like, after.

Ben Solo had thought about death all too often. A quiet solace when the nights became too sharp, when it felt like he'd been hanging on by a thread that could snap at any moment, with no-one below to catch him. He didn't think of beatic fields and dreams coming true, didn't think about finally seeing the ones that used to love him. The best thing he could always hope for was for the pain to finally stop. But maybe he didn't deserve even that. 

"The others aren't here, are they?" 

"No." Something melts in her eyes; a pity, a quiet let down. "But this hardly feels like a forever place, does it? I'd have it up to here with those birds after a week." Another weak chuckle. It's easy to laugh with her, so easy. Even when it's tinged with sadness. "If you asked me, I'd say we're just passing through." 

"To where?" Maybe this is the best that he gets; another goodbye, a closure. Maybe this time, there's nothing waiting for him on the other side. 

"I guess it depends." Her palm slides down to his forearm, she gives it a gentle tug. "Walk with me, would you?" 

**Seven**

They leave the cries in the far-off distance, their pathway marked by two sets of footprints leading into the misty horizon. 

"I've never told you how proud of you I was, you know," she tells him when the tears finally begin to dry on their faces. With every inhale he tastes more of their surroundings instead of the salt in his tears; the sun-warmed skin, the water, the sweetened smell of damp earth, orcanthus and balmgrass.

A mirthless smile colors his voice. "There wasn't much to be proud of." It's easier to reminisce once it's all locked far away, behind impenetrable glass he could only scour for the shades of what he'd been through.

"But you did all the right things in the end, didn't you?" 

"A little bit too late."

"No such thing." 

He doesn't ask where they're going, doesn't ask what the point is. For the first time in his conceivable memory, he tries to be content to just _be_. 

"Tell me something, Ben." She wades through the water, skirts gathered in fists and hitched up to her knees. The flock has taken flight now, far back where they came from; it glides low by the surface of the river, shaded silhouettes dancing against the backdrop of frothed cataracts. "What would you do if you got to live?" 

Against his better judgment, it trickles in, drop by drop. The possibility that he never dared to consider, not realistically. In this un-reality, Ben Solo got to limp away from Exegol, shoulder in shoulder with the woman that he'd die for. In this un-reality, she finds it in herself to smile at him anyway, even though he was never forced to give everything up to see the light behind her eyes flicker back to life. In this un-reality, she wants him to be there with her. The path they walk crumbles and falls away, too distant and abstract to follow. "It doesn't matter." 

"Why?" 

"Because I _didn't_ get to live." It's too easy to sneak glances through that window at his could've-been-future, too close and too far away all at once. Behind that window, they walk away and they get to be happy, eventually. He doesn't follow them, not really, stuck behind the glass and only able to watch the un-him and un-her disappear in the distance. What happens to them later? Those musings are reserved for a different version of reality. Not his own. In this one, she's the only one in that window. She walks away towards a hopeful, new tomorrow, without a backward glance cast over her shoulder. 

"Indulge me for a second."

He huffs because she doesn't get it, his mother.

But then again, maybe she does, all too well. Maybe she got to look through such a window of her own, look at a version of her life where she never lost her husband and nothing ever fell apart, a reality where her son got to be just who she had always dreamed him to be. He tries his best to blink away the tears prickling at his eyes. He wants to protest, shove that pain away from him, but he can't. He couldn't look her in the eye and tell her it's not how he should pay. "I don't know."

"Would you go back to the First Order?" 

It all seems so far away. Almost like another lifetime. In a way, he supposes, that's what it is. Still, the prospect is unthinkable, abhorrent. He could never go back, couldn't shoehorn himself back into the hardset moves and suffocating thoughts and constant denial of what always besought him to just give in. "Of course I wouldn't. You know I wouldn't."

"What would you do, then?" 

He lets himself glimpse back through the glass, tinged golden and bright like daylight, at the world that wants him back. It's not easy on the other side, but no good things ever are. "I'd do what I could to fix things. Help those I could." Most of those he hurt would never forgive him; he wouldn't blame them. "I'd use all I know, try to end this war once and for all." It's surprisingly easy to spin the fairytale, to let it unscroll from his thoughts like nimble arcs of letters, shiny with fresh ink.

"And what about Rey?"

Hearing her name alone breaks something warm and tender out in his chest. "What about Rey?"

At that, Leia shrugs with a lopsided smile. "Well, I don't know," she says. "You gave your life for that girl, didn't you?" 

"I did."

She hums, appreciative. "So you're telling me you'd traipse around the galaxy, trying to finish the unfinishable, while she's off alone, Force knows where?"

"If that's what she wanted, yes." It wouldn't be perfect, far from it. Maybe, at times, she would visit him. Maybe they'd fall into an easy companionship, something unbreakable built on the darkness in their shared past. She'd spend time with him because she wanted to, not because she had no other choice. He'd do his best to remember those moments, savor them. Imprint the sound of her laugh into his ears until he couldn't forget it, even if he tried. He'd try to remember it, but he wouldn't have to; in time, she would always come back. "I've chased after her long enough."

"Sounds to me like you're feeling pretty neutral about her. One would think you cared more."

He turns towards the riverbank, towards the mist-encased crest of mountains beyond the waterfalls. A ghost of a smile creeps onto his lips. From the very moment they'd met, what he felt about her was anything but neutral. "Of course I care." 

She had barged into his world and turned it upside-down, made him question everything he considered a steadfast certainty. She eluded him like a legendary bird, always just out of reach, always pushing; steadily making him tear down the layers until all that was left was him, vulnerable and bare to her gaze. She was there to look past the monster he got lost in, the only one brave enough to approach and risk the worst. She reached out for his hand and made him remember that beneath the time-hardened layers of ache, he was still looking for the same things she did.

And oh, did he want to give them to her. Someone to be there with her, just to _be_. Someone to listen and not shy away when fear and anger took over, uncontrollable and terrifying, but still inexorably hers. Someone to see her as she was, not as two broken halves that could never quite be mended together. He'd do it all for her, and more. Including leaving her in peace, if that's what she wanted.

But if she ever happened to reach out, he'd be there; to hear her every laugh, to listen to her woes and embarrassing stories, to laugh with her because she was sad and to cry with her because she was happy. He'd wake up with every early sunrise and learn, learn, learn. Everything that scared her and everything she dreamed of. Everything that made her laugh and everything that haunted her in the middle of the night, when she drowned in the feelings he knew all too well. He'd learn the mundane details, too. All of the songs she'd sing when she worked or took a shower, how she'd take her caff, how she'd make her bed. All the books she'd relish and the ones that would make her chitter in frustration every other sentence at anyone who listens. All the jokes she had told herself when she was alone, all the stories she had made up when there was nobody to listen. He'd listen to them all, over and over again, until they bored him to death, but he'd still be there if it made her happy. He'd do it all over again until the years carved new aches in their bones and they both learned all of their stories by heart.

It's an easy realization, transparent and bright like the morning sky. There was never any other way for them, not from the first time they'd clashed their weapons and sealed the inexplicable curvature of their fates together, not from the first time they'd spilled one another's blood. No, it was always going to end like this. He lets the smile break out onto his features, just like he did when she let him hold her close to him for the first time and held him in turn, like he was something precious, something to be treasured. He laughs, easy, luminous. "I love her."

"Of course you do."

He inhales the mist-saturated air and tries to contain himself, back into the tight confines of his body, tries to hold back the parts of him that reach out and wander in the search of _her_. Against all odds and all better judgment, he hopes. It would be cruel of the Force to keep them separated forever, to repel them from one another like two pieces of magnets turned to the wrong sides. No, they will see each other again; or so he chooses to believe. One day.

One day, after she would have lived her life to the fullest, after she would have taken every opportunity in her stride and arrived at the end of her days, breathless with wonder. He'd be there to listen all about it as she finally caught her breath. 

"Would you want to be with her?" 

"Why are you asking those things of me?" He turns around to face his mother again, the feeble spark of anger melts as soon as it's born. "You know that I can't."

She stands next to him in the ford, ankle-deep in the cooling water, gaze pointed beyond, unfocused. "How would you define a waterfall?" 

He almost laughs at the absurdity of the question, each one she poses stranger and more impossible than the last. "Why?" 

"Indulge me." She sounds sadder now, almost resigned; peaceful, too, at the same time. 

He sighs and tries his best to do that. "It's a big bulk of water cascading from great heights into-" 

"Exactly, water. Just water. It might take the form of a waterfall, or sea foam, or a wave, or a single drop, but it's still just that. No matter what it looks like, no matter where it is. No matter how far apart two drops are, they're always one and the same."

He wants to joke, hide behind well-trained sarcasm. Tell her with a spiteful smile that _that sounds like something uncle Luke would say_. He can't. "Is that what's going to happen to us? After we reach the end?" They'd stopped walking, but the traces remain; two crooked lines, leading back to where they came from.

"That depends on the choice you make."

"I don't understand."

He hadn't noticed how much she'd changed along the way. The willful spark never left her tired eyes, not even when they grew softer around the edges and became embedded in wrinkles. Silver-grey spun into her braids, still just as beautiful as he'd remembered. It's not his mother from _before_. It's Leia from _after_ , from the time he'd given her every reason to never want to cast another glance at him. And she still loves him just as much.

"You could come with me if that's what you want." She gives him the warmest smile he'd ever seen her offer, molten brown in her eyes glows like embers. With that, she offers him peace. It's more than he could ever ask for, more than he deserves. "But that's an easy way out if you ask me."

He sighs, eyes drifting shut. "Too easy."

"That's what I thought." 

"So I'm going to be punished?" 

"Oh, Ben." Tears prickle beneath his closed eyelids, he shuts them tighter to keep them from spilling. He doesn't see her move closer; not until her palms rest warm against his cheeks. "You've been doing just that to yourself for all those years." At those words, they finally break free; he opens his eyes and lets the new tracks form where his mother holds him. "You've suffered enough already."

"What's the second option, then?" 

"To live, Ben. To live." He brings his hands up, rests them, soothing and steady on her own; doesn't try to hold back the sobs, not anymore. "I want you to go out there, try to fix everything you can and be the happiest you could ever be. Or don't-" She chuckles. "Break everything again and be miserable and fall and get back up to try one more time and be _alive_."

"How?" His voice is broken now, almost inaudible. "I'm-" 

"You gave everything you have for someone you love. I held out long enough to be able to do the same for you." He squeezes her small palms beneath his own, a _thank you_ he couldn't word if he tried. "It won't be easy, no. It’ll probably be the most difficult thing you've ever done. But you won't have to do it alone." Her hands drop down, encase his own at the level of her heart. Only then he realizes how badly they shake. "But as I said, it's your choice."

"What about you?" 

"The water, remember?" She smiles, as sure as the sunlight. "It's not a goodbye. Not a forever one."

For the first time since he'd woken up and saw his old-new hands, he allows himself to truly dream. They're good hands, capable. They've been far from clean. Now, finally, they can try to be. They could build and they could soothe, they could comfort and protect. They could hold the body of the woman he loves and card through her hair when she cries. They could mend her wounds when she gets hurt, they could bring her pleasure. They could caress her swollen belly and hold the small child they'd bring into this world if that's what she ever wanted. Tiny fingers clenched around his own, ready to receive everything they could learn from him. The good and the bad, the dark and the light, all perfectly balanced. And when the time came, they'd all become water again, every drop mingled together in an inexplicable impossibility of existence. This time, he'd go with no regrets. "I know I don't deserve any of it. But I want it, I want it so bad." A sob breaks out from his chest; tired, hopeful. "I want to live."

"It's not about deserving." He keeps his eyes closed when she mounts to her tiptoes, one last kiss warms his forehead before she's gone, a whisper of everything she's ever been woven close around him like summer breeze. When he opens his eyes, he's alone.

His gaze retraces the steps they'd both taken; they're still there, deep in the sand like the unchangeable past. On the other side, the sand is clear, fresh. "Where do I go?" He mutters to himself, still the only solid thing in the shifting reality of his daydream. 

_Usually, the only sure choice is to go forward._

The illusory sun sets over the waterfalls, every drop they consist of reflects the light in a way unique only to it. Together, they make new colors spring to life.

He sets his eyes on them as he takes off running. 

∞

It's in those very first moments that she tells him about the garden; the time when the new galaxy is too abstract to be seized and the new victory too fragile to be properly celebrated in their heads.

Rey doesn't know any of the names yet, but she doesn't have to. Doesn't know which plants would be safe to nurture and which ones she'd better steer clear of, which ones have particularly useful qualities, which ones could be smelled, or tasted. Doesn't know which ones would survive in the climate she'd dreamed for her "eventually" home. It's okay. She's got all the time in the world to learn those things. 

It's a good goal, a garden of her own, she decides. A tangible one. Something concrete and simple enough to work towards. Ben doesn't interrupt her, not once, gaze muddled with what she guesses are the remaining traces of shock and lingering pain of fractured bones. She talks just to keep his eyes open and fixed on hers as they wait for the Falcon to arrive, fingers clenched on the threadbare fabric of his sweater, then his wrist, then his hand. He speaks back in ghostly caresses against her knuckles and unfaltering stubbornness to hold on.

.

She's twenty-three years old, or so they'd estimated with as close of an approximation as possible, and her garden is nowhere near as grand as the conservatories and botanical reserves she'd seen in the ancient cities in the core worlds. A couple of flower beds behind their house and no rare, exotic specimens, it's contained enough for her to tend to without dedicating every waking moment to the task. After all, there's so much more to be done.

Still, the quiet moments she spends there are the closest she's ever come to being perfectly content, to being at home. Well, the second closest.

It's controlled chaos, a melange of colors, shapes, and a panoply of scents. Crooked rows of lyris and blueblossom line the off-red duracrete paths, flower beds on each side riddled with fiery orange of anagallis, velveteen petals of black lilies, and stray violet trumpet-shaped arallutes. By their balcony, helicine stems of candlewick flowers climb the wrought-durasteel rods, each day waiting patiently for dusk to unveil their true potential and bathe the darkness in luminescent dapples of pale orange and gold. When she can't help but stay awake, she untangles herself half-begrudgingly from a warm embrace to admire the miniature galaxies of her own making. They sing as she passes her fingers over veined petals, currents of the Force palpable like airflow. Their silent symphonies lull her to sleep until she's pulled back to bed and cradled by the same pair of hands that once saved her.

.

In the clear morning air replete with night-hazed chill, she picks the white-pink mycosias and thorned clusters of dalsa flowers. Petal by petal, she cleans them from dirt and arranges them scrupulously around the chocolate and fruit-covered harmonberry cake. The recipe is horrendously simple, but she’d made it from scratch all on her own and it’s enough to fill her chest with pride. There's lettering, too, silvery-white and tilted, nowhere near as graceful as the meticulously shaped poems on parchment scrolls they keep neatly arranged on their shelves. _Besh. Esk. Nern._

("I don't know where you get the patience to do that."

Her palms are already stained with red ink, and judging by the thinly-veiled amusement in Ben's eyes, so is her face.

He'd tried to show her how to properly hold the quill, but she never seemed to be able to get it quite right. One hand warm on her waist, he guided her unsure movements with the other. The result turned out laughable at best, shaky and lopsided in comparison to his own practiced work. 

"Well, I don't know where you get the patience to garden." A warm exhale tickles the locks of her hair as he chuckles, lips soft against the nape of her neck. It had taken a while for them to get used to it, to learn that they could reach out and pull the other in for no other reason than that they _could_.

"That's different."

"Yes, it takes even longer."

"No, it doesn't."

"Not if you're cheating." 

"Using the Force isn't cheating." 

"That's exactly what it is."

She turns around in his lap, only a little bit tempted to grab the ink and mark his cheek with a line that would match the one she'd marred it with all those infinities ago. Instead, she laughs and lets their breaths mingle. "Show me again.")

. 

She hasn't, as of yet, gotten tired of kissing Ben Solo. To be honest, she hardly thinks such a thing would ever be possible. She tries to savor it, ration as much as she can; just another one of the old habits ingrained in her bones. It takes conscious effort to remind herself she has every right to spend the rest of her days exploring every abundance she'd been gifted with. Of time. Of food. Of greenery. Of him. His kisses are heady with hunger and tenderness, supplicating and demanding in equal measure. Sometimes he'll lick against the seam of her mouth, asking for access with a soft whimper; she'll deny him, again and again, just because she can. Just because she knows she will always, inevitably, let him in again.

"Guys, I'm begging you. Some of us need this emergency hip padding, ASAP."

She chuckles against Ben's lips at Poe's remark, the covert-plan-birthday-cake with thirty-two lit-up candles long forgotten. She only pulls away when Finn shoves one of the mycosias into his mouth after a paughty: "Fine, more for us, then."

"Oi, those aren't edible!"

Ben grins against her cheek, only marginally less amused than Rose, and significantly more amused than Finn, who's desperately sticking his tongue out in an effort to get rid of the bitter aftertaste. "I seem to recall the words of a wise woman," Ben says, "that once told me everything's edible if you're brave enough." 

A hot flush of embarrassment floods her cheeks. "That absolutely never happened."

He laughs, bright and uninhibited, another simple pleasure that used to be in dangerously short supply for entirely too long. Golden-brown reflections glimmer in his tear-stained eyes; it's all too easy to remember how they began to flow. He'd broken down quietly, softly; a quiver of his chin and a shaky gasp, the heel of his palm pressed against his eye socket.

For a brief moment, she saw in him the boy he had told her about, the boy young enough to be forbidden from playing with matches and old enough to know that there were much more dangerous games already at play. The boy humble enough, or maybe too convinced of how undeserving he was, to only ask for one thing - to keep what was already his.

("You know I don't deserve this."

"Some things aren't deserved. They're given because we need them.")

She reaches out towards him, treads the well-loved path of the warm tendrils that have always pulled the halves of their soul together. _You get to keep this. And so much more._ He reaches back, tentative but steady; it'll take a while before he truly starts believing it, she knows. The corner of his mouth rises, muscles fighting to contain a full-fledged smile. It's a start. 

"Make a wish, Ben," she says. 

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I made myself cry multiple times while writing this, I hope it ended up touching you on some level as well. Huge thanks to my beta and my infallible supporter, Jazzie (burnthevvitch), who had to listen about me crying like a baby over this fic for a few days. You're the best.
> 
> If you liked it, you can come yell at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/iridescentrey) and [Tumblr](https://iridescentrey.tumblr.com/).


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